


Arc: A Series of Straight Lines

by ERNest



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Hamlet - Shakespeare, Мор. Утопия | Pathologic
Genre: Banter, Collars, D/s elements, Despair, Existential Angst, F/F, Fluid Power Dynamics, Gags, Hope, Hugs, Illnesses, M/M, Mad Science, Minor Violence, Morning After, Suicidal Thoughts, Tender Vivisection, Trans Character, Trans Female Rubin, Very Mild Gore, metatheater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 6,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23134969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: A collection of Pathologic fills from the 2020 Three Sentence Ficathon, loosely organized by character and theme.
Relationships: Alexander Block/Daniel Dankovskiy, Artemiy Burakh/Daniel Dankovskiy, Artemy Burakh/Alexander Block, Daniel Dankovskiy/Gryph, Daniel Dankovskiy/Stanislav Rubin, Daniil Dankovsky/Laertes, Gryph/Stanislav Rubin, Klara/Victoria "Kapella" Olgimskiy, past Daniil Dankovsky/Victor Frankenstein
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	1. Daniil/Artemy

_With Their Soft White Hands_

hand in unlovable hand

“I’m not sure I know how to love,” Burakh told him once, and then Daniil saw him prove himself wrong time and time again with how he treats every child who lands on his doorstep, and his dedication to saving even those whom Daniil had already dismissed as beyond salvation.

The memory comes to him when Burakh offers to give him a hug and then stays where he is, shuffling his feet – it can’t be a lack of will, more that he doesn’t feel himself able, or doesn’t feel himself worthy to reach out like this.

Fine, thinks Daniil, but a gap in his knowledge doesn’t make him unlovable, or that would make two of them, so instead _he_ crosses the gap and from that very first touch they twine together like fingers until it stops mattering where each begins and ends.

would you love me more if I killed someone for you?

“Do you think I walk around cutting people open for my own pleasure, oynon?” But even as he protests he wonders if perhaps it’s true, because after the three men he was given no choice but to cut down, the act has become less like murder and more like mere habit. If taking the tissue of a still-beating heart will bring them closer to a cure, if it will earn him the regard of this beautiful mind then he will lead as many souls over Death’s Threshold as necessary to close that door for the rest of the town, and he may even call it fun.

in love with the end of the world

“Most people couldn’t do what you do what you do, Daniil, and I don’t just mean the relentless sleepless nights. Did you know that it’s not _normal_ to be thinking about death literally all the time, and if most people tried they’d come apart at the seams?”

“But how can you just _ignore_ an enemy that’s everywhere?” he counters, dismissing Artemy’s nonsense, though it's undeniably endearing.

send my regards to hell

“The Inquisitor tells me that tomorrow you’re going deep,” Dankovksy says, still not sure if he’s jealous of an opportunity he could never have been granted, or relieved that the crushing obligation of so much earth does not fall on him.

“I am, yes,” the Haruspex answers, wary.

“I hope you find something valuable for either of our pursuits, but even if you don’t, that doesn’t matter, just – just make sure you come _back_!”

see you in another life, brother

Artemy stopped trying to travel back to earlier clocks around the tenth day when it became clear that it had all gotten too far for any minor course correction to make a difference. He can _taste_ the bad ending coming when Dankovksy enters the Cathedral, and the copper tang that floods his mouth is all the worse for how it entirely fails to smother the fleeting snatches of conversations they almost shared.

He wraps his arms around the Bachelor, telling him, “It didn’t go too well when we were brothers, so maybe next time we can try it your way and be mirrors instead.”

“tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine”

“I thought about setting the theater on fire, when I first found out the secret behind it all.” Daniil still won’t look at Artemy, perhaps afraid of what he’ll find in his eyes, but at least he’s speaking his sorrow instead of trying to swallow it back with shot after shot of vodka.

If he doesn’t offer something in return, then Daniil will never forgive him for this moment of weakness once he reaches the cold light of sobriety, so he admits, “There were moments when I wondered if Clara’s ‘ _rivers of blood_ ’ might not be better than the slow death the Town was suffering through, and moments when all I wanted was to hasten that flood along.”

_Man of Blood, Man of Earth_

lying without lies

The earth cannot be or say anything but the truth, so as the Bachelor finds his final resting place in the warm soil, he knows that he is loved as never before. He does not come from this land, but somewhere far away, but the Haruspex speaks for the land and teaches it to embrace him fully.

When the time comes, he doesn’t feel the knife at all, only lips and tongue and teeth, not because he’s fooling himself, but because this is not a story about death but one of life.

_Any Choice Is Right_

what is meant to be

Nothing is meant to happen, nothing is inevitable, and nothing is predestined. The Lines can lead the way but the choice still needs to be willed by someone or it isn’t going to happen.

Still, entering the home of his childhood now that it’s been scrubbed clean of so much misery, and hand in hand with a foolhardy Bachelor he never thought could love him back, Artemy begins to feel that this is how it was always intended to go.

Artemy/Daniil, having raspberries for the first time

There is a box with ice, and inside it is a box with paper insulation, and inside _that_ is the prize jewel of deliveries from the Capital. Daniil looks at him expectantly at each step of the unwrapping process, as proud as if _he_ grew these berries himself. “And there you go, like something out of a storybook,” he says, content to feast his eyes on the look of surprised delight when Artemy gets his first taste.

“put me down, you’re drunk!”

“Put me down, you’re drunk!” Daniil howls, pounding his fists uselessly against Artemy’s back.

“And you’re not, Oynon? Only one of us tried to bite off Vlad the Younger’s ear, so why don’t you thank me for rescuing you, and give me a little kiss?”

needless pedantry about Frankenstein the monster vs. Frankenstein the doctor

“Sure, but the Creature was Frankenstein too, he was basically the doctor’s son, right?”

“First of all, if _I_ have to be known as “the Bachelor” everywhere I go despite all my accomplishments, then Victor doesn’t get to be called a doctor when he dropped out of _undergrad_ and had to sleep on my floor for three months. Secondly, he rejected his creation immediately without giving it a name and… oh, Frankenstein _was_ the monster, wasn’t he?”


	2. Plague

misery made beautiful

The Shabnak-Adyr traces the streets like bacteria in a vein and looks in awe at all this fragile beauty. These dear warm beings fight so _hard_ to keep on living even when they should have given up all hope by now.

But this suits the Plague just fine, because the more the silly humans scurry about, the faster their blood pumps and the more vectors and carriers appear.

_Touch My Mouth and Hold My Tongue_

that which crawls

The plague crawls on its belly ‘til the sun comes down, and then it stalks tall and proud and hungry, and then it oozes along windowsills where it runs like an open sore. It can be anywhere and everywhere and usually it _is_ , meaning it gets to observe the lowest depths that these lovely vessels of filth will sink to when there is nothing to hope for.

Humans turn out to be nothing but animals after all, and _oh_ how they crawl!

_Bind Into A Whole Body_

sometimes you want to go for a walk in nature and sometimes nature wants to go for a walk in you

When the infection speaks to him Artemy is sure he hears the voices overlapping from somewhere outside himself and the first time it happens he wastes a lot of time looking for its hiding place. The truth is that as far as the Sand Pest is concerned he is the world and the world is him, so why would there be a distinction between inside and outside?

It’s the kind of elegant interconnection that his father would have approved, and maybe if Artemy weren’t slowly but actively dying right now he’d be fascinated too; but all that really matters to him is that because of this dread deal Murky is family and Murky is safe.

_Someone to Hear Your Prayers_

reach out and touch someone

The infected are not the enemy, not really. They’re hardly shambling around because they want to make everyone else the same as them. They are sick and they are scared and they reach out because they want what anyone would want in this situation: the comfort of a human touch, relief from pain, the reassurance that they won’t die, or at least some help going gently into that dark night.


	3. Metatheater

_Opening Night, Opening Doors_

and that was the first day

The actor has rehearsed for the horror of surviving a plague, the character has banked on a final miraculous research project, and what they both _get_ is a murder mystery. Time ticks down, all leads are dead ends, and the participant-observer is still naïve and hopeful enough to think this is a story about buying food, and not a story about starving.

The first day ends, to be followed by a shorter night, and a yet shorter day, but perhaps tomorrow will be better; it sure can’t be worse!

_You Don’t Have To Stay Here but You Can’t Go Home_

every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end

All three healers have failed and none of them will get the ending they’ve argued for. As the protagonist, Artemy is the only one even allowed into the Cathedral to _make_ his argument, even though his hopes of convincing anyone are as dead as the seven children he should have been better at protecting.

Before he can be dragged away, a spotlight freezes everything but him and the director who offers him another beginning, with the caveat that this will be a restaging, not an extended run.

_Hold A Mirror Up To Nature_

meeting the theater performance version of themself

There are very few mirrors in this town, almost none, and the few he’s seen are broken or turned to the wall, so Artemy doesn’t have a clear idea of what he looks like, only fragments and shadows.

The actor who struts and frets his hour upon the stage each midnight isn’t _him_ exactly; his role is the Haruspex, who is a composite of impressions. But it’s enough to get an idea of his own strong jaw, fluffy hair, and blue eyes, and the questions posed by the character of himself sometimes help to clarify his own aching confusion.

the existential dread of finding a scar and not knowing how it got there

“You were careless with your life, my young green actor,” Mark says proprietorially, “And so I think your life will be careless with you from now on. What finally finished you off was a stab wound to the shoulder, so—”

— Artemy thanks Big Vlad for his _clearly_ selfless offer to retain him as a family doctor and as he passes by the clock in the hall his shoulder twinges suddenly with some new hurt whose causes he can’t begin to guess at.

discovering fanfiction

After the Bachelor leaves behind the demented children who claim to have made him he takes a wrong turn and ends up not at the staircases but in a hallway made of words – he picks a door at random and its sentences condense into a quiet moment as he and the Haruspex [discussed their visions of the future](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22246708), a moment he now remembers; another finds him [buzzed on twyrine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22289863); a third in which he is well-cast but poorly-acted. Here he is [perched teasingly above Artemy’s lap](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21968152), here a [construct pulled out of the ground](https://archiveofourown.org/works/748719/chapters/1396862) by his hair, here [temporarily turned into a corn snake](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21743053), here [tenderly vivisected](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22054984), here holding hands with figures from other fictions, and on and on.

There are countless copies of everyone he’s ever known, making each of them a collaboration controlled by many hands, so he chooses to find a kind of freedom there, even immortality.


	4. Steppe

dancing as the sky falls

The firmament is no longer firm. Something evil flows in through the rips in the sky, so you let your feet trace a path for the earth to rip open too, and something good flows up and out with the rattle of swevery and the buzz of ashen swish. Your dance is a nexus, a meeting point of two moments and two worlds.

bloodied but still laughing

Ancient blood seeps through the seams of the world, everywhere a beautifully impossible structure was shoved into the earth with little regard for what came before it. A plague has stepped through the doorway, but there is a little bit of hope in that viscera, which might become the basis of a cure.

People are still going to die before the conclusion, but out on the Steppe the wildflowers laugh.

you’re a vile old woman

“Vile indeed,” laughs Aspity, “and that’s why you need me; who could be a better reminder? The dirt that makes me _is_ old, I suppose, ancient enough to have been the foundation of a world, yet I have barely inhabited this form for five years. No, nor woman neither,” she adds, and a fingernail that looks like it’s never been cut slices through coarse canvas coverings to the skin below – no, _past_ the skin, where instead of viscera there is only dusty void.


	5. Emissaries of the Powers That Be (Bachelor & Inquisitor & Commander)

_Emissaries_

just let me be the villain

  * If the Bachelor was really a villain he would have abandoned the town to its fate on the second day without bothering to tell anyone about the danger swiftly approaching.
  * If the Inquisitor was really a villain she would have spun the fact of puppetry to her advantage instead of forever feeling herself caught on those strings, and she certainly wouldn’t have nudged other key players to an understanding.
  * If the Commander was really a villain he would have razed the town with not a flicker of conscience and all the mass executions would be no mutiny but part of the plan.



_History Buried In Shame_

Block, celebration guns

For years, not quite a decade and a half but _damn_ close to it, whatever Block has chosen to do, no matter what it ultimately was, he has been both adored and despised for it. This is because no one is only themself, and he less so than others: he is the war itself and the Powers That Be, and all the hopes and fears and bitterly disappointed expectations that have been pinned on both.

When he unfolds the first of five morning newspapers to determine the verdict placed on himself _this_ day, he can feel his hands grow darker with it (they always do).

_ everybody knows that the war is over / everybody knows that the good guys lost _

A victory, Block is told; a victory, he tells his men. He looks out over a sea of corpses, corpses that used to be men, and takes no comfort in knowing that only nineteen of them were his and the mothers of some _other_ nation will be mourning the loss.

The war is over and it wages on in the space beneath his breast.

_The Opposite of Protecting People_

this isn’t what I ordered

Block rereads the paper, slower now, his lips moving silently and then he finally looks up at his aide. “They want us to shell the _entire_ town?” he says, aghast.

He’ll take his men out there to the middle of nowhere, because those are his orders, and then he’ll find someone, _anyone_ , who can convince him that something can be saved, because some orders simply cannot be carried out without question.

Alexander Block, _idealism sits in prison / chivalry fell on his sword_

What is Right and what is in accordance with the Law and what is in accordance with his own values are not always the same thing, Block is understanding as he gets older. He wants to know that his is a war worth waging but above all he needs to be loyal to something and all too often that means his conscience is caged by his duty.

But something about this town, at this time, makes him keen on breaking that pattern, after which he will fall on any sword required of him for what many would consider a sin.

_And In Short, I Was Afraid_

Aglaya Lilich, I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker

Aglaya Lilich is very good at what she does, and what she does is synthesis of all the facts and all the figures to form a faded blueprint for some fresh future.

This she has done in service of the Powers That Be, but the qualities for which they selected her are also the reason they should never have beckoned her so close because _now_ … now she knows what they are.

Or maybe they don’t care, maybe this is something all Inquisitors go through, just one more layer to the game – because that’s all it is, really – and maybe the only one who suffers for this knowledge is her.

“the only winning move is not to play

The Bachelor was never meant to vanquish this foe, he was meant to die trying, to try every solution offered to him and then, after all that, to fail anyway. The Inquisitor suggests that he could beat them at their own game if he refused to play and let their precious town dissolve into dust and obscurity, but he snaps that he _will not_ sit idly by while people are dying, rigged game or not.

Daniil does not see Aglaya’s triumphant smile.

someone has to be the first to trust

It’s normal to be doubted by those in authority, and natural to second-guess their intentions so then _why_ does Commander Block act like he trusts him implicitly? Daniil is still waiting for him to call in that favor he owes from when the army rescued him from the Abattoir, and that was two _days_ ago.

On the other hand, it will all be over soon, and an unfamiliar sweetness fills him each time the Commander – _Alexander_ – repeats that he relies on him entirely.

_The Call, The Hand on the Chest_

Alexander Block, ready for the fight, and fate

Almost from the dawn of his existence, Alexander has been made to lead soldiers, but he himself has no guide other than images from a history so old that it might as well be myth.

He is not the champion of fate or justice or power that everyone wants him to be, but he knows himself to be a worthy fighter and a worthy tool – if he has control over nothing else, he will have a say in whose hands will direct his feet and whose ears will be touched by his tongue.

He is lost, he is lost, he is all but lost in himself when the saint girl who should not be able to do any of the things she does, bends to touch his brow, and bids him rise.

_Fainites! (A Call For A Truce)_

Block, in the Polyhedron

At the base of the Tower the children who call themselves Dogheads insist that it is impenetrable, even to the disease that has forced itself into every other crack and fissure, but Block insists on inspecting it himself, and evacuating anyone willing to leave this place. Their leader, Khan, makes him remove his boots first lest he carry the Pest in on their soles, but smirkingly waves him inside.

Feeling as if he’s stepped onto holy ground he descends the chrome stairs for much longer than it took to climb the ones outside, and on his way down he sees many wonders that he forgets as soon as he looks away (may the Powers That Be never learn of these uncharitable worlds, because they’d think only of conquest).

Daniil Dankovsky/Alexander Block, kisses

“My turn now,” Daniil hums at four minutes to midnight and if Block hadn’t already bent his knees he might have passed out from the overwhelming feeling of having his face claimed like a territory.

“ _Yes_ ,” he half-gasps, half-moans into Daniil’s mouth, “yours.” One hand reaches back to find the wall and guide him to the floor, and the other curls against the nape of Daniil’s neck to pull him down on top of him.


	6. Artemy

Artemy Burakh/Alexander Block, problem with authority

Field medic Burakh’s patient can only be two or three years older than him, maybe not even _that_ big a gap because they’re all wearing eyes of much older men.

“Doctor—” he implores, his tight grip less from the pain in his hip than the intensity of his need to be heard— “this country is sick, this army is sick, it needs a healer!”

Privately Artemy agrees, but some sentiments shouldn’t be expressed out loud without knowing exactly who one is talking to, and often not even then, so all he says is, “I need you to keep still for this, Corporal Block, or I could easily make an error that makes the healing process messier and more prolonged than it needs to be.”

it’d break your heart how very much alike we are

Everyone and their mother calls him an orphan these days and he’s still so bewildered and confused that his usual response is something like, “No, I’m a _surgeon_ ,” the same way he’d deny being the Ripper.

But in time he notices how different the title sounds coming from Sticky or Notkin than it does when Katerina or Vlad says it, and in time he figures out why that is. These are kids of the streets, for whom their parents have become a distant dream, and if they welcome him into the club it’s a sign of trust, a sign of respect, and it gives him a little bit of hope that these are people he might have a chance of saving.

stop touching me

The problem is with Artemy’s heart: it’s too soft. Each person he meets carries a world inside them, full of joys and hurts and little things no one else could quite understand, but in the moment of speaking, he _does_ understand everything, or well enough. These people carve a space for themselves in his heart and he wants to save everyone, but they all need to stop touching him like this or he’ll be too paralyzed by these individual faces to be able to focus on the whole.

_his heart, here, underground_

matching heartbeats

Artemy finds and binds the three items offered to him by an ancient cave: any triad will do as long as he wills it so. On the stone slab is a heart which is his own heart and which is also an echo of something much larger that beats below the earth.

He considers refusing this trial for just long enough to reject the rejection, and when he steps into the abyss it is to see if the thing inside his chest beats with the rhythm of a human or a bull.


	7. Daniil

science project gone awry

“Stop trying to play G-d, Dankovsky, the Powers That Be are the only ones allowed to interpret the Law,” Daniil mutters to himself as he flings the contents of his office into a box that will probably be too heavy to carry, “you’re messing with the fabric of reality, no one can avoid Death, it’s a universal constant!” He makes a face and takes a diagram of the human brain from his wall, the last thing here that really matters, and counters his absent detractors with, “Well I’ll show them, I’ll show them _all_ , once I establish my fabulous Thanatica and become the man who’s defeated death!” It’s probably just a _tad_ too melodramatic to laugh at the end of a speech like that, no matter how much he wants to.

Daniil, _I’m a scholar and a gentleman / and I usually don’t fall when I try to stand_

Daniil has had good sex before, often mindblowing, but he can’t recall the last time a partner was so attentive to his needs and impulses. Legs still trembling from that last orgasm he stands to pick through the mess of clothes to put on his own, because the quickest way to ruin a good thing is to stick around to see what happens.

“No, wait, _stay_!” murmurs the sleepy lump under the covers, but because Daniil knows this is just part of the script they both have to follow, he tosses out a ready-made excuse that will suit them both, something about an exam worth forty percent of his grade, and hopes he isn’t falling too hard.

bedtime stories

In the hallway to meet the wise woman they call Sabha Usp’tae, Daniil comes face to face with a doll in a very familiar coat. He raises a hand to his face just to confirm that his eyes are more than mere buttons: he is the One Who Sees, and if his visions of an achievable Utopia were only made of void threaded through the pinholes, then he might as well give up.

Then he decides, No – and turns the doll to face the wall, because he _knows_ he’s not a bedtime story and refuses to give credence to that idea by checking for himself.

nights full of blood

The Bachelor slinks like a shadow from one bin to the next, stealthy as a guilty secret, until he’s shoved backwards into one, blade first. It’s not like he has anything worth taking, otherwise he wouldn’t be reduced to picking over the trash, but if this is how it’s going to be, he’ll waste no time in dispatching the bandit with an efficiency that resembles joy.

The vicious necessity of self-preservation mingles with the blood that spatters his face, and he really couldn’t say which sensation makes him laugh like this, but there’s so little to laugh about these days, so he’ll take anything he can get.

reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated

It seems that half his force of orderlies has abandoned their posts to gather around this firepit – _drinking_ on the job to, as they say, “Honor the memory of Bachelor Dankovsky, that beautiful soul, may he rest in eternal peace!”

“You blockhead, _I’m_ Bachelor Dankovsky,” Daniil snaps, the headache that’s been threatening all morning putting him in no humor for this nonsense.

And yet… there _was_ that dream, whose death claimed to be prophetic, and all the unsettling little coincidences since then; maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to go ask Georgiy Kain _why_ he would sign a death warrant when Daniil makes a remarkably vital corpse.

_The Weight of Days_

the end of the world was overrated

Somehow he knows from the beginning that he has twelve days to settle accounts with the killer that has entered this town, but the days creep up on him along with a mounting sense of dread.

Every day he does everything he can to solve this overwhelming problem and all the smaller ones that appear as well, but there hasn’t been a single day yet that he _can_ do everything that must be done, and every day there is one less day.

It wears him out, it wears him down, it wears him away, and as he weighs the costs against what will be saved he’s learning that everyone measures these things differently; soon he will be crushed under that weight – maybe not today, maybe tomorrow – but when the end of the world comes he will not be able to make a decision.

_Hold Your Peace_

say what you want

“I’m so very glad we discussed this, doc,” Grief says as he wipes some drool from around the gag and shows it to Daniil, who swallows thickly, as best he can. “See, isn’t this better than just hoping I’ll get annoyed enough to make you stop talking?” He smiles softly and adds, “Especially since I _love_ to listen to all your beautiful words.”

Daniil/Laertes, youth to itself rebels

Daniil pushes Laertes back to his knees, reveling in the power in the muscles beneath his hands and the fact that they still submit to _him_. He meets his gaze with a defiance that doesn’t entirely mask his admiration.

Without thinking about it, Daniil’s fingers find the silver snake at the front of his collar; no matter who’s standing above the other, they both know who’s truly in control here.

_Gone Still And Cold_

disappearing and leaving behind a letter marked “open when [blank]”

(Fill inspired by meradorm’s fic, [In Vivo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/748719/chapters/1396862))

If this were happening to someone else, it would be rather elegant – the death of the Polyhedron was packaged as a miraculous cure, and now it gets to happen in miniature, the ashes of its blueprints presented in a vessel meant for the panacea – but since this was all _his_ life, Daniil can only scrabble desperately at the walls of his mind.

It shouldn’t, doesn’t, matter, the blueprints were as good as blank anyway and their creator already dead, but he was _working_ to open a pathway towards understanding and now he’s left with a letter full of lies. He doesn’t look at the hands that clutch that envelope, too afraid to see himself vanishing along with the reason for his existence.


	8. Clara

_So Paint It Black and Take It Back_

marching band

Clara is told from all sides that she has come to be a savior for the broken, the beaten, and the damned; she didn’t know this about herself before, but the more she hears it the more she believes it, and the more true it becomes.

Katerina tells her without fear that this town will not escape drowning, no, not even for the sake of ten righteous men, but instead she will find the Humbles, rally them around her, and prepare for the security of their eternal souls. This, Clara can understand, because she has always been able to find the hooks in people’s chests, and now she attaches them to her vest with safety pins, where their jangling voices come together into the triumphant music of a marching band, which is all she really needs to carry on and play this part.

last minute substitutions

Clara, an afterthought, takes the stage. No one expected her to make it this far when they had barely planned to make her a major player in the first place, and certainly didn’t expect her to make a sister for herself.

But the Bachelor and Haruspex have both missed their cues, so the Powers That Be have no choice but to send a genuine miracle worker in their place.

“Don’t forget who you are”

To be one person was never enough for Clara, and she sometimes thinks that _she_ is the sister who was invented in a wild attempt to shift blame. It gets so _hard_ to remember where the lies all began, and when exactly they stopped being lies, so she might as well be the thing that came _next_.

One thing that will always be true about her: she is the thief girl who has refashioned herself into a free miracle worker.

Clara/Capella, flower language

“Well, girl who looks at me with a dead woman’s eyes, what color are _my_ eyes today?”

Capella seems to consider the question seriously, because she puts aside her book and leans elbows on knees the better to peruse her face – and don’t think Clara misses how often her eyes drop down to her mouth.

“At this moment they are the color of violets: a little bit of sweetness sprung into the world.”


	9. Utopians

an excellent big brother

It is said that the Stamatins spent their time in the womb holding each other’s ankles, a foundation for each other from the very beginning – no one knows where that story got started, but the brothers each say they remember it.

The question of who was born first never comes up because they are a single being so the birth was not complete until both boys were blinking at the same light and breathing the same disinfectant-scented air. Andrey is the oldest because of his protective streak, or Peter is the oldest because he can always come up with a plan for them, but either way, they are excellent.

Is this an allegory for something?

There’s a bull staked in the Bone Lot, and meanwhile Andrey’s brother is dying. The only person he cares about is going to burn himself alive along with everything that _makes_ him himself, and all anyone can talk about is some fool riot led by people with a child’s grasp of symbolism. It’s _way_ too straightforward, simply lacks elegance, and for that crime alone Andrey agrees with the Bachelor and the Stage Manager that the allegory deserves to be burned to ashes.

was she beautiful or not beautiful?

“She was the Polyhedron, that is all: it goes beyond beauty,” Peter mumbles, forehead pressed hard enough into the wood grain of the table that there will be indents there come morning, but he is too deep in mourning to care.

This is even a kind of mourning that Dankovsky can understand even after such a short time, because no one could see or enter that structure and feel nothing. It was progress in all its beauty and all its terror too, but also ancient dreams born and given form for the first time, and bones sunk into the ground; all these things were worthy of love and now all these things are gone.

“only love escapes this glass metropolis

a strange town, hardly mundane but capable of being so much _more_ than it is, gets destroyed, but the soul of it survives to be moved across the river. what was crude earth becomes glass and light and the clarity of pure thought, all as cold and alien as ice.

the utopia is a trap to everything but love, but is that love _produced_ by the city of wonders, or does it flee a place where it could never survive for long?


	10. Good Omens!

Crowley & Aziraphale, earthly and celestial fire

Crowley dips his hand into the soil outside the cemetery and finds it damp with the smell of life. He recognizes the feel of plant matter and its attendant microbes, and something else he’s afraid to name.

He’s not an idiot, he was in Spain that one time, and there are corridors he avoids Downstairs, so yeah, he can tell the basis of this flame is blood, but he’d rather _not_ know it.

//

A column of light stretches from the star that rivets the sky in place to the theater around which this town rotates, and Aziraphale oversees the days with his myriad eyes. He burns in the presence of a genuine miracle, of which he could take his pick. He could fill a book with the wonders he’s found here, but some words are _too_ powerful, so best not.


	11. Rubin/Bad Grief

_For The Devil’s Way’s A Bust_

would you rather be the best of the worst or the worst of the best?

Grief chose the kind of man he would be too long ago for it to be anything but fate, now. Hardly anyone could call him a good person anymore but he does have _standards_ , and the fist with which he holds an iron grip is the same size as the heart from which those rules pulse.

Because he understands what people are like, he knows exactly how good Rubin must be to think himself the worst of men even when he’s done right at every turn.

kingmaker, oathbreaker

Grigory Filin was never going to be blue-blooded, with a name like that it wouldn’t be likely, and with the name he chose it would be impossible. Bad Grief could never become Simon, with his kingly blood glowing silver, and yet that’s exactly what Rubin intends for seven sinners.

“I broke an oath when I broke a body, but if I can feed this town with my body, as Simon did, won’t that be worth it?” he asks, and Grief wishes he knew the answer, but he knows enough to hold on tight to him with everything he’s got.


	12. Daniil/Rubin

Daniil/Rubin, _when the evening is spread out against the sky / like a patient etherized upon a table_

  1. _A Patient Etherized_



He didn’t expect the Butchers to be killed for doing the work he’s not allowed to, though he probably should have, and can only imagine how much worse it would have been if he had ignored Aspity and stood beside them, clearly directing their hands. But how much worse could it be than this: one body crumpled at the feet of a patrolman who demanded payment for answers; the second next to the graveyard, belly up to the sky, insensibly waiting for the fire to claim him; and a ten minute head start to search for a dearly-bought vial of infected blood.

There’s not much time, but there’s enough to rest a hand on a cheek that’s almost still warm and commend its spirit to G-d or whichever ending he expected, whichever ending will have him, and he thinks ‘ _Rubin, this better be worth it._ ’

  1. _Spread Out Against the Sky_



The Prosectorium is gloomy and Rubin’s glower is dark and full of judgment, but Daniil still comes here whenever he needs a patch of sky. It’s not just the blue of salvation contained in the vaccines, or the emotions that chase each other like summer clouds across Rubin’s eyes.

It’s a place where he doesn’t need to wear a mask quite as tightly to his face, where they can sit in silence for hours without trying to perform for each other, where he can wiggle or tap or pace if that’s what he needs to hear his own thoughts, and where, haltingly, Rubin tells him her name.

  1. _Let Us Go Then_



After all this, Daniil thinks they deserve gardens.

He could have left that outcropping over the river as monument to a corpse and gone there every day to mourn the twisted remains of a patient he couldn’t save, but instead he renews it with seeds and bulbs and cuttings. The greenhouse isn’t how Maria expected this place to catch the light or how Peter imagined dreams would find a home, but it is as much a place of wonders and transition as the Polyhedron was, so of course it is also where he takes Ksenia on their first official date.


End file.
